You may not agree with his choice of President, but the point is that in this age of infotainment - that hybrid of news and showbiz that has largely taken over the United States and is gaining hold here, too - it's important that we wake up and stay awake.

The infotainment ethos of newsrooms puts those on air to comment on politics not necessarily because they have anything new to contribute but because they "make good TV". Producers and bookers look for "clashers" and "bashers" - those who often are at the extreme end of an issue. Generating more heat than light, we watch them having a go at one another and think that's what a political debate is. It isn't. But it's what a circus is.

And this is not a trend. We are entering Britain's first Twitter/media election and there could be more comment about Ed Miliband's teeth than his policies. Like it or not, this is where we are.

Meanwhile the mainstream press - largely right of centre - has always had one job to do in the run-up to the general election: get a Conservative majority government elected by any means necessary.

The job is to obfuscate, hide, exaggerate, underreport/overreport. Ignore. For example, most people don't know about the Tory advisor who also happens to have a high editorial position in a major newspaper. We don't notice the obvious campaign being waged against the two people who stand in the way of that Tory majority: Ed Miliband and Nigel Farage.

So the press pillory them and hide away gems like this, for example, on the car-crash that is the NHS. By the way, when I asked a Tory peer recently why Jeremy Hunt was even still in a job after Leveson, the peer replied: "He has 'an air of competence'."

We, the electorate (the people who can't be bothered to exercise their right to vote can go stand back on the kerb) don't deserve bamboozle. But that's what we're getting.

We got barely a peep in the press about the biggest defeat that a government has suffered in over a century: the House of Commons vote against going into Syria. That was led by Labour and Ed Miliband. That defeat kept us - arguably - from winding up as mates with Isis.

In the days when a "vote of no confidence" could be called after a major defeat like that, the government could have fallen. Instead, what has fallen is William Hague. He's still talkin' and walkin', but they must have told him over n the FCO that a foreign secretary who cannot carry the House on a major vote loses masses of credibility on the world stage re: foreign policy.

And then there's Michael Gove, the reason to not vote Conservative all rolled up in one package.

His "free" schools (free of local control but we, the taxpayer, pay for them by the way) was Gove's way of defeating his two bête noir: "red" unions and "red" local government.

Problem is that there's very little oversight in his scheme, with the head of Ofsted saying that it was he who wanted what oversight there was to end, not Gove, leaving the community, through its Council - no input pro or con - in "free" schools at all.

But he's obviously untouchable, while Andrew Marr states on his show - with Labour maintaining a lead in the polls - that "it's been a bad week for Labour".

Samuel L. Jackson had a message for America .

We need an equivalent one here in the UK.]]>Brussels-Obsessed? You'd Better Worry About the Encroachment of US 'Big Pharma'tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2014:/theblog//3.52309012014-04-29T04:48:04-04:002014-06-28T05:59:02-04:00Bonnie Greerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/bonnie-greer/Astrazeneca ought to be ringing alarm bells up and down the land.

And it would, if we all weren't so busy being driven into a frenzy by Ukip and others over Brussels. And being played by George Osborne's green- shoots- with- dead -roots "recovery" in what the magnificent Paul O'Grady calls "Sheriff-of-Nottingham" Britain.

The other foreign entity we'd better be scared of is - as ever- Uncle Sam. This time around it's the encroachment of U.S. "Big Pharma", the term used to describe mega companies like Pfizer which are quite simply the legal drug equivalent of the "military/ industrial complex".

Like many mega U.S. companies (Apple, etc.) Pfizer (creator of Viaga, amongst other drugs) keeps its squillion dollars in profit offshore, out of reach of the American tax system.

Perfectly legal. But at a time when schools, the crumbling U.S infrastructure, and U.S. jobs could use a boost from private wealth investment, Pfizer looks across the Atlantic to loads of opportunity as a result of the Tories' slicing and dicing of the National Health Service.

Of course the Conservatives are crowing about The Big Bid: ‏@Freeman_George - going live on #WATO to discuss Pfizer bid for Astra Zeneca and global success of UK #LifeScience sector - but why wouldn't they? This fits right into their small state game plan. It's part of their crusade to get us to believe that the Labour Party alone is responsible for the world -wide, North, South, East and West great recession. They're grooming us for the next round of Big Society cuts- 20 billion quid of them- under the slogan that means absolutely nothing: #longrangeplan

Part of this "long rang plan" is to become more like the U.S.

Anyone who's spent any time in America knows that if something happens, you're patched up asap and out in the street if you don't have medical insurance. This brutal reality is coupled by a plethora of commercials: for pills; medicines; drugs; doctors. The typical American medicine cabinet is stuffed to bursting with remedies.

Big Pharma has helped to make America into a nation of hypochondriacs shackled with a "health system " that works ok if you have a job providing health insurance coverage whose premiums can rise at the whim of the provider. Without notification.

But if you don't have a job and/or health insurance, then the "land of the free" becomes a region fit for "Doctors Without Borders".

Health care is the reason why people take any old kind of work. They need that all-important health insurance number.

One of my relatives, after having a near-fatal heart attack while on holiday in Germany, kept reciting his insurance number until they put him under anaesthetic. The doctors were appalled.
Right now I'm involved with the 8th Circle of Dante's Inferno, otherwise known as Chicago's Cook County Probate Court and its representative on earth, the GAL-(Guardian Ad Litem).

Like the "Inferno", you're led by these two entities into various descending circles of hell. It's an excellent way for the children of the elderly, in particular, to learn what indignity, incompetence, and the waste of enormous amounts of time and cash are really all about.

The American system of "pro se" - the right to appear in court without a lawyer and be given the same time and respect as someone lawyered up -is continuously used by people in Probate. Some of these "vexatious litigants" clearly have mental issues, but the system doesn't recognise this, so you'd better learn how to be an expert. And an activist.

The U.S. is the land where its president has to fight tooth and nail to get a law passed that would make it possible for all people to have decent care -a law that most of us in the UK and Europe would go: "what's the big deal?"

In other words, America, for the poor and the working poor has not been a great model. But it can be. Because it is beginning to adopt-through law- what we are losing-the ethos that health care-the best possible-should be available-free at the point of delivery-for everyone who needs it.

Look, of course the NHS needs reform. Corruption, where it appears, must be rooted out. No one argues against that.

And no, I don't have any answers. But I know is this: we must protect what's left of the NHS.

Protect it against the encroachment of hedge funds; cease selling our medical data to private companies so that they can make products to sell back to us; and stop Big Pharma becoming even bigger here.

It is the dismantling of this great and unique institution, with barely a peep from broadcasters and the mainstream media, that is this great nation's undoubted clear and present danger.]]>What Shakespeare and Farage Have in Commontag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2014:/theblog//3.51976502014-04-23T08:34:05-04:002014-06-23T05:59:02-04:00Bonnie Greerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/bonnie-greer/Question Time, the programme that helped make him a household name.

It's always a shock to a civilian to see how matey politicos are with each other when they're off air. Many have gone to university together. There are a great number of Oxbridge PPEs on both sides of the aisle now deciding our futures. Some were even once members of the same university debating societies.

I've never seen any politicos shun one another backstage at QT- no matter how they appear on camera. Except for Nick Griffin. They gave him a very wide berth indeed.

The climb up the greasy pole of politics often begins at, for example, the Oxford Union. It's designed like the floor of a mini House Of Commons and with the same rules. Our future leaders do their teething there. When I first participated in a debate at the OU, the walls were full of pics of a student William Hague. This helps give you the feeling that for many of these politicians, politics is just another choice. The journalists know who these future PMs, cabinet ministers etc are from early on. Some of them were at uni with them, too. Our politico/journo/broadcast/commentariat isn't called 'The Westminster Village' for nothing.

Contrary to what some people think, you never know what you're going to be asked on QT or when you'll be called to speak. Anybody who isn't nervous when they go out there is crazy. I sat next to Farage and he was just as nervous as everyone else when that theme music began. But the minute he experienced what is called in the theatre: 'the roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd', he kicked in and proceeded to mow down all of us on that panel. He had that audience in the palm of his hand. He didn't talk 'at' them, but 'to' them. He'd be a natural for Shakespeare's Falstaff: bluff, straight-talking. 'Authentic'.

So what if his 'loss of control' UKIP EU 2014 election posters offend some people? He'snot talking to them/me anyway. Like Shakespeare, Farage knows his audience. Meanwhile, Cameron, Miliband and Clegg have paid for guys from abroad to help them.

Ed Miliband... well, the hiring of president Obama's election genius, David Axelrod is interesting and could be a game-changer. 'The Axe' as he's known in our joint hometown of Chicago, never brings a knife to a gun fight. Plus anybody seriously involved in politics doesn't underestimate Axelrod nor Miliband for that matter.

Clearly, 'The Axe' and his people see a wedge, just as Axlerod did when he took on the Clintons in 2007/08. Forget about him not knowing anything about UK politics. Some say that Cam's advisor Lynton Crosby, an Aussie, doesn't know anything about the British, either. That didn't stop him securing the London mayoralty for Boris. Twice. Or playing a blinder with 'Born Again Dave'. The 'UK is a Christian nation' rallying cry, the perfect 'dog whistle' political move, Crosby's speciality. It caused some very smart people on the Left to step right into the brown stuff when they reacted to it. A total masterstroke. Or like they say in Australia: "You beauty!"
Add to having Crosby on board, Cameron truly believes that he can take Miliband out; just as he believes that he can obliterate Clegg and therefore get his majority, even if a few political analysts beg to differ.

All in all, this has truly been a long, dreary, punishing Parliament, rendering Ukip the 'None Of the Above' party. Plus there's a possible treat coming for them on polling day: all this contributing to their Miley-Cyrus-of-the-political-scene-image; swinging on that wrecking ball, thumbing its nose at everyone.

Okay, it has its share of fellow-traveller whack-jobs like the man rallying people against the Twitter account: @WomenDefyUKIP just because he doesn't agree with their opinions. But people like that are always on the margins. UKIP doesn't have a monopoly on trolls like him by any means.

So what do Shakespeare and Farage have in common? They know their audience. And play to it . To the hilt.

Shakespeare, whose 450th birthday it is today, might say, surveying today's political scene: "....the world's a stage... the men and women... players..."]]>'12 Years a Slave' - An Oscar Win That's Not Necessarily Good Newstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2014:/theblog//3.49018712014-03-04T19:00:00-05:002014-05-04T05:59:01-04:00Bonnie Greerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/bonnie-greer/12 Years a Slave.

It has started a much-needed conversation about slavery, past and present, and, in doing that, it is a worthy winner. But I wasn't impressed with it as a movie.

I saw it with my husband, whose ancestors are largely what is called "indigenous" to this country. Since I've been yelled at from "indigenous Brits" before about their not having been immigrants ever: a link to a piece about the people who came here 15,000 to 7,000 years ago from Iberia and who became "indigenous" Brits.

Anyway, my husband turned to me in the middle of the picture and said: "But, it's so bland!" Which is the word I had been trying to find for what I was feeling...

Maybe I felt that way because I had read all of the crits and reports of women fainting and grown men fleeing from the theatre. I'd also read the social media posts about people sitting stunned for a long time, holding hands, weeping, wailing etc.

I really didn't want to go because I'm a bit squeamish as far as movies are concerned. I don't like paying (or watching for free) extreme violence, cruelty etc. and I sure didn't want to see people being flogged.

But I went because this is a story about my long past, about my ancestors. And it didn't matter to me at the time what was being said in parts of black America that 12 Years is actually "a European film" and the real deal - the American pic - hasn't arrived yet. I wanted to see it anyway.

But black America has a point.

There are always two things to keep in mind about the movie business. One, Hollywood is, above all, about money. Period. Two, the Academy members are on average 65, white, and male. Oscar nominee and French actor/writer/director Julie Delpy lashed out at this, but people have been saying this for decades. The word was that most of these guys hadn't even seen 12 Years, and preferred American Hustle, a film that took place in their early maturity, and Gravity, which has effectively changed the way films will be made. And maybe above all, before the Best Picture win, 12 Years had made most of its cash outside of the US.

But there was no way that they weren't going to select 12 Years. The Academy is liberal (which being one myself, I don't object to). When the record is read, they don't want to have been the ones to have passed on a picture with this subject matter and this amount of gravity.

No, 12 Years is not a great picture. But there are two great performances: Lupita Nyong'o, who rightly won Best Supporting Actress, and Michael Fassbender, who wiped everyone else, with the exception of her, off the screen. If the picture had been about the relationship between them: the sadistic/masochistic/economically orientated/Christianity-drenched nature of it, then McQueen would have created a masterpiece.

Instead he's made just a good picture, one a bit too long and repetitive but maybe will launch more and better ones as well as giving Brad Pitt a new curve to his producing career - it's said that he's next producing a Martin Luther King pic to star another British actor-relocated-to-the -States David Oyewolo, as Dr. King.

This is why 12 Years may be a turning point - it marks the arrival, on the Hollywood scene in a major way, of non-American black people telling American stories. To say, as some critics here have, that 12 Years is the film that the States should have made is to be ignorant of how difficult it is to get any picture made, let alone a black subject by a black director. I will stick my neck out here and say that if a black American director had tried to get this project off the ground, well, let's say, it would be challenging. Black American directors are ghettoized like the majority of black Americans are in every other aspect of American life. They don't get the traction in liberal Hollywood. But a foreigner... ah, that's another thing. Because you can still tick the box.

The truth is that whatever nationality you are in the West, if you are black in the arts, you are corralled, parcelled out, mediated. For example, if you are black American here, you're not seen as "black" i.e. not black British, so doors can open. If you are black British in America, the same thing holds.

12 Years a Slave may make it even harder for black American filmmakers to be financed, to have a shot at clutching that Oscar, too.

I really hope I'm wrong. Because right now, in the land of our birth, as far as those old white guys who run Hollywood are concerned, black Americans are not the blacks of choice right now. We're all - Brits and Americans - still down on the old plantation.]]>Why Laure Prouvost Won the Turner Prizetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.43847332013-12-04T19:00:00-05:002014-02-03T05:59:01-05:00Bonnie Greerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/bonnie-greer/
The other short-listed works were brilliant: Lynette Yiadom-Baokye's portraits (yes, a painter was shortlisted. The complaint that painting isn't ever nominated for a prize named after a painter is an old one. Her work is in the style of the French 19th Century heroic painter David; big, emotional works that she completes in one day. You stand, you stare at them in awe, not only for the artist's passion and artistry, but because of the bigness of her heart and soul.

David Shrigley's sculpture is so playfully controversial that some schoolchildren were steered through a special door away from it and onto the next gallery. That's because his naked male figure is urinating - loudly - in a bucket. And you can sit there and draw any part of his anatomy that you wish. Shrigley makes you engage with not only your own priggishness, but your own inability to sit still long enough to have the contemplation it takes to study a work and re-make it in your own way. The gallery where the sculpture is located is decorated with the attempts of spectators to capture the work. The subsequent drawings are funny, touching, thoughtful, inept, all of the stuff that amateurs do.

Tino Sehghal - the favourite - does not allow any of his work to be filmed and you can see why. Because it happens inside of you. It is you. I will never forget the four elderly gentleman arguing at the top of their lungs on the subject of "what's it all about?" They almost came to blows at the exit. After all, they'd just moved through a completely empty gallery where an actor in the role of gallery guide walks up to you to engage in a conversation about capitalism and its insidious effects on the world. If you agree to engage - no matter what your point of view on the subject is- you can then collect a few pounds at the exit desk. About 7,000 quid has paid been out so far. Most people do the conversation in order to collect the money. That's the point. There are people who will do anything - no matter how banal-for money. It makes you stop and think and it is profound.

But it is Prouvost's work which is unforgettable.

You enter it the way you enter a prehistoric cave. There is a sharp, black momentary darkness where suddenly, you hear a film playing. It is the French-accented voice of the artist herself, telling us the story of her lost grandfather. There are things in the space: dusty, disorderly tea pots and tables, all a bit like Miss Haversham's room in Great Expectations. But you are mesemerized by the story itself: where is the grandfather? Is he dead or alive? Is he even real? And what are these objects around us: tea pots, plates... half-made. Strange.

At once you know that you are in the presence of a great story-teller. It's like the very best story-time you ever had at school, when you sat there, utterly mesmerized as a great teacher acted out all of the voices and you saw it all in your mind's eye and you never, ever forgot .

There are the usual nay-sayers about the Prize itself and about what's called "conceptual art". How can an unmade bed, a sheep pickled in formaldehyde, a light switch be art? We can do that stuff ourselves, can't we? No, we can't. That's the first reason for the prize - it makes you confront the everyday, put yourself up against an artist and judge. Nobody can be a Rembrandt, but can you be a Tracey Emin? That is the question, and it is an important one. Because if we just confine art and culture to the museum - something Michael Gove wants to do with education, for example, roll it back to the past - then we lose. Then the nation becomes in danger of what the Chinese newspapers are calling the UK - "just a small island, nice to visit".

The Turner Prize is important because it keeps the art world, the cultural scene awake. Yes. its atmosphere can be too full of art 'luvvies' and 'mavens' and the 'usual suspects' but they're easier to get rid of than the idea - and need - that art and culture matter. They do. They are what we are.

What Laure Prouvost's installation entitled: 'Wantee' (punters put a sum total of £22 on her chances of winning, according to Ladbrokes ) demonstrates, too, is that big, bad Mighty London with its critics/punters/experts/buyers doesn't always get it right. Seeing this work in Derry/Londonderry, at what was actually a pop-up gallery located in a former army barracks (the culture secretary was "too busy" to visit, but what a gesture that would have been!) made this work - the entire show - even more powerful.

The genius of the great JMW Turner was acknowledged early in his life, and the prize is given to a young/youngish artist. As it should be. And it is a French woman, long resident in Britain, who sheds some light on the national story. With her tea cups and saucers and pots, woven through her imagination, it is her foreign eye that expands the vista.

So perhaps we need art, challenging art, because - for a moment - it pins down our restless, nomadic species. Art might be a method that we humans have evolved to bind together our wandering, elusive selves .]]>The Kennedy Assassination Did Change Everything, But You Had to Have Been There to Know Ittag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.43230822013-11-22T08:42:24-05:002014-01-25T16:01:55-05:00Bonnie Greerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/bonnie-greer/
If that was true most of us couldn't talk or write about anything that happened before we were born. Since that's obviously ridiculous, I've been reading with interest the opinions and assessments of people who clearly hadn't even been around on 22 November 1963,let alone old enough to know what was going on. In the end, it's their opinion and perspective and you can learn things from people who weren't caught up in the moment.

First of all, I grew up in 'The World Of Kids'. All baby boomers-no matter what circumstances, ethnicity, gender, had their own version of it. Television, toys, three meals a day-total mummy and daddy-wrap. We played outside, we had plenty fresh air, the whole thing. After all, we boomers were the hope of a generation that had come through the Depression and World War Two and nothing was too good or too much for us.

And we took it all. For example, the luckiest year to be born in this country was 1948.
If you were born that year, you had 180 degree cradle-to-grave welfare state. That's one of the things your parents voted to set up, one of the reasons the Tories didn't win the election and Churchill wasn't returned to Number 10. Everybody wanted to start over. Wipe the slate clean. Make a new country.

American parents, too, wanted a Year Zero. They worked as hard as hell to make it happen. That's just one of the reasons why, in the States, they're known as 'The Greatest Generation'.

On 22 November 1963, in the US, after lunchtime, (my hometown of Chicago is in the same time zone as Dallas) on a school day, we were told that the President had been shot dead. I walked home, crying. It was raining, like something out of a corny movie. People were wailing; standing around stunned; praying out loud. Later in the evening, we saw pictures on TV of the First Lady
(every little girl had 'Jackie' paper dolls) dressed in that gorgeous pink Chanel suit all covered in blood, standing next to Lyndon Baines Johnson, the Vice President, as he took the Oath of Office on an Air Force One clearly getting the hell out of town.

My mother - whose tears I had never seen before - cried all day long and all night for days. She wasn't the only mum doing that. Dad cried, too, but guys didn't do tears in public in those days. Babies watching Bozo on lunchtime TV were crying because everybody around them was crying.

It was four days of wall-to-wall 24-hour TV featuring not Breaking Bad or the X Factor but two murders, a wake, a state funeral, and a new President addressing the nation. This was coverage that the entire country - millions and millions of people - watched. This was unprecedented. It changed the industry forever.

What I remember about the funeral was the drum, a lone, rolling, dark thing.

My little cousin drummed its mournful beat for months and months on everything. There was the riderless black stallion being led down Pennsylvania Avenue with his saddle on backwards to indicate a fallen Commander In Chief.

And everything, everywhere in deepest, mournful black. Except the Kennedy kids. The fashion-conscious Jackie dressed them in pastels.

'Apple Pie America' had been blown to bits and what was left? Deep, deep suspicion.

And sure, there've been conspiracy theories all the way to the beginning of the Republic but answer me this: (here I go: see what I mean?) how could a guy with a cheap rifle double-tap the POTUS- the most protected person on the face of the earth- in full view-then he gets blown away himself, part of that revolutionary rolling coverage?

One day we've got JFK and East Coast Cool. And literally boom! the next day we've got a cowboy straight outta Texas. Throughout his Presidency and beyond, there were those who said that LBJ's known ambition to be POTUS must have made him part of a conspiracy to kill JFK. Nutty? To many, it's still their meat and drink, even half a century later.

Left/Right/Centre or Nothing, we Boomers are a demo who don't accept 'The Official Version'- of anything. We were kids in a country where murder could happen to anybody and nobody told us then or as far as we're concerned ever told us anything that sounded to us like the truth about that day. Or any day.

"...Bizarre that the country could change so dramatically with the death of one man.." But it did.

November 22, 1963 was "The End". Just like Jim Morrison sang a few years later.]]>The Era Of Hybrid Politics Is Overtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.40421012013-10-04T05:27:05-04:002013-12-04T05:12:01-05:00Bonnie Greerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/bonnie-greer/
In 1997, Tony Blair swept in on a landslide buoyed by a theory called 'The Third Way'. The swing to Labour was so massive that it all but wiped out the Conservative Party. Its leader and defeated prime minister, John Major, got the moving vans up to the door of Number 10 in record time, as he himself spent the afternoon at Lords enjoying the cricket.

Those Oxbridge PPEs who followed (and they are legion) worshipped at the shrine of Blairism. They became researchers for their parties; maybe a little bit of university teaching or time in the City; back to some kind of policy unit; then a safe seat was found for them and the climb up the Westminster ladder began.

This was all done with barely any encounter with a real live voter. It wasn't necessary. Tony Blair had shown that it was possible to lead a Party without a base and with next to no relationship with the backbenchers.

So therefore, because his reign was essentially an oligarchy, the King could be undermined from within with barely a leak to the outside.

Blair made the Westminster Village more insular than it had ever been. It has become an ecology of journalists; lobbyists; 24-hour rolling news, and now the internet, bursting at the seams with blogs; the Twitterati (of which I'm one) and various and sundry.

But We The People yearned for old fashioned dividing lines; for clear blue water; for Right and Left again.

In a series of excellent columns, Peter Oborne, writing for the Telegraph nails it. He praises Ed Miliband's conference speech, for example, because Miliband walks the talk. He states that Miliband's oration may have been a bit socialist. But that's really what Labour's soul is.

It's called Labour because it ought to be about working people and their organized labour; the unions that do this; and a land in which things are evenly distributed. The Labour Leader should say these things unabashedly. Being the friend of the City and newspaper moguls and Big Business is the opposite of its mission.

Labour created the NHS and the Welfare State in general. So it is right to not only defend it but promulgate it.

The Conservative Party should be the Party of the Right: small government; the middle class; business, etc.

It should be anti-collectivist and maybe anti what some on the Right call "political correctness", one of the most over-used terms in the language.

Yet, that it was the Conservative Party that led the UK closer to Europe - through Ted Heath - makes perfect sense.

Those well-travelled/ public school educated Tory grandees (Heath was a grammar school boy himself) would have been more comfortable with the notion of Europe.

The outlier that was Margaret Thatcher and her robust Northern Toryism turned the Party around.

She brought into the fold those who might have been part of the upwardly mobile old Labour working class. And they are Eurosceptic to their core. No wonder Labour defectors voted for her in their droves.

This left Labour with socialism as its defining edge, but Thatcher had made it impossible for a socialist to be elected. Tony Blair got that, and so used this realpolitik to achieve his first massive victory.

What Oborne nails in his pieces is that Ed Miliband is leading Labour back to its roots: cradle to grave, full spectrum services for the citizen; universal education and the protection of working people. He'll tax what he perceives as The Rich if he has to. If they go find another country to live and invest in, so be it. He will run on this and perhaps something more, the real spanner in the works for the Tories and UKIP: an in/out referendum on Europe. Frankly, I've never been convinced that Labour was a Europhile Party at its core.

The complaint that Miliband is only talking to his Party, not the nation, is valid right now.
He has to tell them who he is, who they are, and then turn to the electorate and ask them to make their choice. It is clear. It is simple.

Cameron on the other hand, came of political age with the aspiration of bringing Blairism to the unelectable Tories.

After throwing Margaret Thatcher under the bus - a supreme act of cowardice - the Conservatives had to figure out who they were. The next generation decided to be 'Tony's Kids' and are now stuck in that default. They can't move the needle.

But they will have to. Cameron will have to. Against his own natural tendencies and desires - the Leader of the Party will have to move the Conservatives even further to the Right and bring back the ethos of the Thatcher.

He will have to become the kind of Tory that she made. 2015 will be about the bottom line, not only in the economy. But in politics, too.]]>Miliband and Farage: The Fearsome Twins of Tory Destructiontag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.40020642013-09-27T07:55:31-04:002013-11-27T05:12:01-05:00Bonnie Greerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/bonnie-greer/
If you read Conservative and right-of-centre media, you'll have known that the 'chumocracy' are pretty stunned by Ed Miliband's performance at the Labour Party conference in Brighton. They've realised that they've under-rated the man, and now have to re-think their strategy.

This will not be easy.

Miliband's refusal to blank-cheque Cameron's attempt to hang with the Big Boys over Syria flipped the script. His criticism of Murdoch caught the public mood. The FTSE reacted to his warning to the power companies: shares dropped. Hard-headed and cold-blooded, the City doesn't afford that negative accolade to a guy they think will never be given the keys to Number 10.

At the Labour Conference I watched Ed Mliband deliver his keynote address, a man at ease with himself in every way. Most importantly, I saw a man who put down a marker: if you're leftwing, centre left, socialist etc, vote Labour. New Labour is dead. And it is only Labour that has a real shot at forming a majority government. No other parties on the Left can do it.

He spoke real word stuff and the hall loved it.

I couldn't wait to see the spin, which ranged from the juvenile - Daily Mail "Yuck!" - to more subtle responses from Sky News, the BBC etc. They're trying to contain him.

Of course, if you only rely on the mainstream media, (the reality for most people) to know Miliband, you'll never know what I'm talking about when I say that, unfortunately, he's neither telegenic nor slick, a mortal affliction in our looks-obsessed/trivia -saturated 21st Century. When I suggested he get media training, I was told that he wanted to be "himself". Probably a wise move because he couldn't do something like that without it leaking out. But somebody ought to tell him that there is no such thing on TV as 'yourself'. 'Self' is an illusion. And yes, the camera does lie.

Nevertheless, be in no doubt: Ed Miliband is formidable, focussed, and bar a national emergency, will be setting the pace from now on.

On the right : Nigel Farage, the dark at the top of the Tory stair.

UKIP are taking votes away from both right and left, but it is the Conservative Party taking the biggest hit. The party chairman just the other day entreated Ukippers to "come home". Tory MP Nadine Dorries has suggested a Conservative Party/Ukip ticket. Things are that desperate.

In the meantime, David Cameron, a man I truly believe really meant it when he said way back in 2005 that he wanted a more compassionate conservatism, has brought into his fold one Lynton Crosby. This Australian election mastermind helped Boris win London twice, largely through scaring the hell out of the middle class.

'The Lizard Of Oz', as he's known among his friends, has a preferred method: go personal. Attack a person's looks; clothes; distort their words, anything to create fear and loathing in the electorate. Works a treat Down Under.

In the case of Farage, the job is to paint Ukip as a bunch of sexist, racist, xenophobic elderly buffoons and sad sacks with a leader who's good for a laugh and a pint but not much else.

That a political party, one that has the serious potential to threaten the status quo, can be those things and survive and grow in the UK, is not something the 'Lizard' wants us, the electorate, to bother our fluffy, pretty heads about.

Just about more than anything, 'Tory Majority 2015' do not want Farage included in the debates. They know that Farage on the same podium as Cameron will finish the Tories off.

Meanwhile they and their mainstream media apparatchiks are telling us that the economy is recovering. But it's Miliband who's asking voters the strategic question: "Does it feel like a recovery to you?"

The Tories are promising an in/out referendum on Europe in 2017, but it is Farage who nails it: "We've heard it before."

Meanwhile, the 'hug-a-hoodie', caring and sharing Cameron has become a kind of 'Prisoner Of Zenda' to the churning forces of his right flank. His solution: get out front and go personal.

But he has chosen a dangerous path.

Next year or sometime before the 2015 General Election, Rebekah Brooks former head of Murdoch's newspaper empire, must stand trial and Andy Coulson, too, Cameron's right hand man. Their trials will shine an unwelcome light at the worst possible time on the prime minister.

This will make the General Election less about David Cameron's accomplishments, or his record, goals or hopes. These will be a sideshow. The election will be all about the man and his personal judgement.

His mates in the press will not be able to outpace websites and social media in unearthing the uncomfortable questions and digging up the dirt. 2015 will be more upfront and personal than any election this nation has ever seen.

Their 'play the man not the ball' approach could sink the Tories in 2015. They themselves could become victims of 'the law of unintended consequences. Or to put it simply: "What goes around... "]]>In Going To Congress, Obama Has Boxed in His Enemiestag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.38536662013-09-01T19:00:00-04:002013-11-01T05:12:02-04:00Bonnie Greerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/bonnie-greer/
He is about to be a part of the biggest poker game of his life.

Cameron's House of Commons defeat stunned Americans. I was flooded with emails that said basically: "What's up with the Brits?" Newspaper headlines screamed "The British are NOT coming!" A few even searched for a British equivalent to the calumny that was heaped on the French at the time of the Iraq War: "Cheese-eating surrender monkeys." But nothing quite worked.

Expat Brits in the US tried to explain to all and sundry that Cameron is not head of state, no matter how presidential he plays it. Tony Blair was so good at it that he was known as simply "the prime minister". To many Americans that was Brit-speak for 'president". They're gobsmacked that British voters seem to have actually got through to their representatives and got them to do what the people wanted.

And for all you Miliband haters out there - look away now. In the US his stock has risen. The rumour that was being put out here that he was dead over there is actually the opposite. The Democrats, Labour's sister party, see him as smart. He listened. He acted. He changed the script.

Obama sees Syria as one of the definitions of his presidency. But Syria is the battleground for a 21st Century proxy war. Iran, Saudi Arabia, many major players are there. And there is something else: Obama can't afford to do a 'W' and go in with all guns blazing. The president's past, steeped in vociferous opposition of the Iraq War, won't allow it.

This September/October, Obama has the annual debt-ceiling circus to look forward to, the now yearly farce cooked up by the Republicans to basically hold the president up to scorn and the nation to ransom.

This year features the repeal of the health care law known as 'Obamacare'... and perhaps the little matter of the president's own impeachment. Now, with the debate that both House and Senate leaders have agreed to, Republicans will, finally, have some meaningful work to do.

Right-wing shock jocks who drive so much of the Republican Party's agenda are about to be sent into a tailspin.

Do they listen to the public and urge their people in Congress and the Senate to vote against striking Syria, thereby making Obama look presidential as he goes before the American people to tell them he is listening to them. Or will the shock jocks have their people in Congress and the Senate vote for a strike against Syria, thereby making Obama look presidential as he goes before the American people to tell them he is listening to them.

The Republicans know that either way, they'll be punished at the mid-term elections next year if they get so tied up in their usual attempt to take down Obama that they don't hear and understand what the electorate want.

The POTUS knows this.

Barack Obama is back at the table. The stakes couldn't be higher.]]>Why I'm Not Celebrating The 50th Anniversary of the March on Washingtontag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.38281872013-08-28T06:28:18-04:002013-10-28T05:12:02-04:00Bonnie Greerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/bonnie-greer/Middle East Strike Part...

At the same time we're celebrating the 50th anniversary of a march that was led by one of the greatest pacifists of the 20th Century.

All of this is being fronted by an African American Commander-in Chief, one of those surprises of history. But why should it be? It was quite simply time, and president Obama is a very good politician. You don't get elected POTUS, or any head of state or leader of a political party by being a saint.

These are people who believe - who know - that they can lead you and me. The level of focus and steely determination that this belief calls for is something that most of us can't even fathom and frankly don't want to.

That's why, for example, David Cameron could believe that his request to the press not to pap him on the beach would be honoured. He's the guy who once said, when asked why he wanted the job of prime minister: "I think I'd be rather good at it."

Barack Obama knew pretty early on that he could be president of the United States. He knew it as a kid. Ditto Hillary, Joe Biden, Ed Miliband, Clegg, Nigel Farage, you name it. And if they don't get what they want, in their humble opinion, it's our loss.

This is now.

I remember the march on Washington. The afternoon TV schedule was cleared for it, the first time this had ever happened. No after school programmes, no soap operas, or quiz shows. The day was boiling hot, but we all dressed up like it was Sunday and sat around the big box in the corner. We tried to get a glimpse of our uncle who had driven the van he used in his business all the way from Chicago to DC. This was a pretty dangerous thing to do. The interstate highways were not safe places for black people, even up north. There were no mobiles then, so we had to just wait until he called and said that he was okay.

There were a lot of movie stars on the podium, which we loved, and then Dr. King gave that closing 15 minute speech. I don't recall I Have A Dream being considered out of the ordinary for him at the time, at least not in our house. To the black community, oratory is a prized art and a necessity. MLK was a great orator and preacher, too. He was expected to close the proceedings with a flourish. It wasn't until later that the speech was studied in schools and seen as one of the English language masterpieces of the 20th Century.
Will we ever have a black PM?

The UK is very different from the US, no matter how much the media try to lead us to believe otherwise. Just as it's difficult to rise to the top of a major corporation or a sport, it's not easy to be eligible to lead a political party and thus be in position to be prime minister. No matter what colour, age, ability or gender you are, you have to have promoters, believers, schmoozers, fixers, big money people, foot soldiers.

I'd settle for a person who just did what they said they'd do and go every day to the HOC to do the people's business. Right now that's black enough for me.

So that's why I'm glad that I was never an Obama maniac. I'm allergic to bandwagons and the 'sure thing'. I don't look up to politicians and I don't believe in "leaders" so I'm not disappointed in him at all. President Obama does his best with the hand dealt him. Possibly no other POTUS has had to put up with the sort of concerted personal attack from a network dedicated to taking him down: Rupert Murdoch's representative on earth, Fox News. Fox News appeals to the American existential fear that black people are the 'other', something Dr. King stated and fought against.

He linked the civil rights struggle, too, with the fight against poverty and war. White Southern rural poverty is still at horrific levels. God and guns are what's allowed them, their accents a by-word for 'stupid'. 'Obamacare' - de-linking health care from employment - would benefit them, but the narrative about the president directed at poor and working class whites from Fox News and others prevents too many from this community seeing this.

They're being made to see what they were made to see 50 years ago at the time of the march: that they're being 'invaded', 'overwhelmed', their 'way of life' coming to an end. Sound familiar?
The truth is that our Age calls out for giants. At the moment we have none. At least none able to affect the outcome of our lives. Or of the world.

So no celebrations for me. I prefer to work before partying.]]>Ed Miliband Polls: We're Being Playedtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.37906052013-08-21T19:00:00-04:002013-10-21T05:12:02-04:00Bonnie Greerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/bonnie-greer/
In the US, you vote directly for the President. Not for his/her party, parliamentary democracy-style. This is one of the reasons that American politics is so cantankerous, even vicious. It's personal.

You can even kind of customise your vote: Vote for the Presidential candidate of one party and then choose you state governor from another because you want to say something different at the state level. In other words, it's a lot about people and personalities.

For example, right now the Republican Party are up in arms because there MIGHT be a bio-pic coming out on TV about Hillary Clinton. Bad news because it could influence the way we vote in the next General Election in 2016. Anything warm and fuzzy about Hillary directed at what's called the 'low-information' person could be toxic for the GOP.

In 2012, the Republicans rolled out their mega-bucks, anti-Obama campaign. So much money was spent in negative personal ads against the POTUS that he asked one big Republican billionaire anti-Obama guy: "All that money! Why didn't you just pay us to leave?"

The Republicans tried to make everyone think that defeating Obama was a done deal. Problem was that they practically had no base, at least not one big enough to get them back into the White House. In their hype to the American people, they hoped that, somehow, the millions would rise up from the mist and go forth. They didn't.

As one elderly Democratic Party stalwart said as she was entering Obama's victory party in Chicago: "We kicked their butts".

As the Americanisation of British politics continues apace, we are encouraged to believe that the polls about Labour Leader Ed Miliband's face, clothes, voice, hair, eyes, choice of reading material, the air he breathes... actually matter.

Why, we're even asked who we'd like to have for PM: David Cameron or Ed Miliband.

BREAKING NEWS: Since we don't directly elect the Prime Minister, why the question?

So why is all this "play the man not the ball" stuff rolling out from Tory HQ and their friends in the press?

It's to divert us from the really big political story: that the Tory Party is in deep trouble. Their famed grassroots operation is shrivelling up. The foot soldiers are defecting to Ukip in their droves.

This shrinking base is a matter of real concern. If you want to read some real Cameron-hate check out the right-of-centre websites and blogs. They don't trust 'Cast Iron Dave', who said with hand on heart before the election that they could count on him for that EU Referendum. Well now it's to be in 2017 or something-light years away. Not now. Not when the Conservatives are actually in Number 10.

Labour has a base. It has a ground game. The electoral map is tilted in its favour. All of this help Labour -in spite of Miliband - maintain a lead in the polls. Ok, the lead right now is soft. But don't count on that to be the case as the months go by. You can love 'em , loathe 'em or just don't give a damn, but everyone has an image/an opinion of Labour.

What, right now exactly, are the Tories?

Are they that squishy green tree logo that Cam stood in front of in 2005 during his very own "Hope and Change" era?

Are they the so-called "Turnip Taliban" who want, above all, that Britain leave Europe immediately and everything else can go hang.

Are they "Boris People" livin' and lovin' in the spirit of Boris Johnson, the Mayor of Toytown as imagined by Machiavelli ?

Are they The Shires, wary of urbanity? Are they Eric Pickles' Northern Tories, tough on all things Left?

Who knows?

The other strand of this two-prong diversion strategy... is UKIP. The right -of-centre press love Ukip MEP "Bongo Bongo Land" Godfrey Bloom because he does Cameron's work for him, i.e. make Ukip look like a risky, even barking choice.

Tory strategists will be praying for more of the equivalent of Bill Clinton's "bimbo eruptions" to come from Ukip.

Above all, they hope that the those who fill the comment sections with negative ripostes regarding immigration, Europe, Islam etc just keep right on doing it. Because according to statistics those people don't, by and large, bother to vote. They won't be there to scare away the 'don't knows'. They are the ones who do vote , the ones that the Conservatives now desperately need.

To help this group along, and since it is entertainment that is the chief yardstick of value and worth in our time, we are all being encouraged to sit back, relax and play X-Factor 2015.]]>The Day Twitter Changedtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.37277132013-08-08T19:00:00-04:002013-10-08T05:12:01-04:00Bonnie Greerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/bonnie-greer/
Some trolls actually break the law and should be prosecuted like any other criminal. But the majority just stay on the right side of it, which doesn't make it any better. I support those women who called for a silence on Twitter. And yet... jet-lagged at 2 a.m, I went on Twitter and saw the hashtag #twittersilence . My first thought-and the one that I held onto all that day was this: most people in the world have no voice. So why should people be silent? Social media is just that: social. People shape it: its mood and tenor. On Twitter Silence Day, the hashtag #inspiringwomen merged. I learned about: the Indian women who marched in London for British women's suffrage in 1911; the Muslims who sent the equivalent today of a million pounds in food aid to the Irish during the Great Famine; the women scientists; composers, an entire hidden history. My trolls thankfully observed #twittersilence and a lot of the celebs did, too. But on that day, too, the people spoke and the space became, for a moment, a great show-and-tell, a conversation. Yes, the death threats were still there. But something else had emerged and it was instructive and powerful. Change happened and can be harnessed. Wonder what political party got that.

The Conservatives And Their Right Flank

It's hilarious to watch the Tories and the right-of-centre press (which is just about all of it) jump up and down over the hiring of Obama Guy: Jim Messina. First of all, it's a million dollar gig, so why not? He'll learn something in a real, live operation and the 2016 American GE is coming up. Plus it is said that he admires David Cameron, but I bet it's a Cam of some time ago. Back in what seems now like some galaxy far, far away, there was something called "David Cameron's Conservatives". Someone in Hammersmith, West London, actually ran in a local election as that kind of a Tory. Cameron was meant to bring a kind of caring, sharing "hug a hoodie" conservatism to the table. He was meant to be 'different'. When he actually got to Number 10, They came for him. The grassroots complained that Cam didn't act like a conservative and so he is trying to be one, while also emulating Obama's winning formula. But unless he gets elected head of the Labour Party (Cam polls ahead of the Tory Party; Ed polls behind the Labour Party) his strategy won't work. First of all, we elect MPs, not the PM. To think that a voter will throw over a perfectly good MP in order to insure that Cam stays in Number 10 goes against common sense and the polling data. Messina was pushing against an open door in the US. More people wanted to vote for Obama than Romney. Period. The electorate voted the opposite party to the President's at the local level. That's how America works. Pollster Nate Silver, who predicted Obama's 2012 victory in the teeth of fierce opposition from the conservatives says that political pundits "are nuts". But they make a lot of money. At any rate, whether Ed Miliband stays or Labour ushers him out, get ready for a barbecue in 2015, featuring Romneyfried Tory.

Bongo Bongo Land

When I was a little kid, the nuns showed Tarzan movies as a Friday afternoon treat. We slid down in our seats as the 'natives' leaped onscreen, boiling white women in pots and running away from a yelling white guy swinging through the trees. And there were loads of drums ringing through the air. Some could have been bongo drums, I wouldn't have known the difference back then. But we did know that we didn't like it. Ukip MEP Godfrey Bloom excuses his "bongo bongo land" outburst as a product of his generation. Maybe where he comes from. Being a 'baby boomer' myself, I beg to differ. Nigel Farage is discovering every day that now he's in the bull ring. There's a real possibility that not only he himself could land a seat in the House Of Commons in 2015, but that Ukip could do real damage to all three main parties, with the Tories feeling the most pain. Godfrey Bloom is who he is and I champion freedom of speech in most cases. But Farage is smart enough to know that standard bearers like 'Bongo Bongo' Bloom, swinging through the trees and yelling at the top of his lungs, need to be stopped with a spear. Asap.

Bonnie Greer will be appearing on HuffPost Conversation Starters panel talking about feminism at Wilderness. The Huffington Post UK are proud media partners of Wilderness. Check back here for more exclusive blogs, competitions and stories soon. For tickets to the event click here: www.wildernessfestival.com

Watch a trailer for this year's Wilderness and check out some pictures from last year below...

]]>Don't Ban Pam Geller and Robert Spencer - We Need All Laughs We Can Get Right Nowtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.34748452013-06-20T19:00:00-04:002013-08-20T05:12:01-04:00Bonnie Greerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/bonnie-greer/
From a contretemps with Andrew Neil on the BBC, to open adulation from the inane Fox News' breakfast show, Fox And Friends, there's no stopping the leader of the English Defence League.

It is said that for his epic march in Woolwich on 29 June, he is fast assembling the crème de la crème of international Islamophobia. Who else but Mr Robinson could do this? And aren't we blessed to have such a world figure on our shores? Forget Julian Assange. It's all about 'Tommy Robinson' The Man Of Many Names.

His newest supporters are the Americans; Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrug and Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, two committed individuals who will, without doubt, become household names in the wake of their association with the Great Leader.

'Hope Not Hate' have gathered over two thousand signatures on a petition to keep the Americans out. I understand 'Hope Not Hate''s outrage, but they shouldn't bother. Let them in. Who knows? Mr Robinson has such powers of persuasion now that perhaps he can secure Anders Breivik a day off to fly over and address the multitudes in Woolwich who will surely, without doubt, be there.

Ms Geller is a devotee of crypto-fascist novelist, Ayn Rand. Miss Geller has even named her organization after the novelist's best known book: Atlas Shrugged. Geller's obsession with arguably one of the worst American novels of the 20th Century should alone merit her ban, but that would curtail her and Rand's potential entertainment value. And we need laughs now more than ever. Perhaps Geller will read passages at the gathering. This idiot's lantern of ideas about capitalism has long been laughed out of court, but why should that deny Geller's right of freedom of speech?

Failed GOP Vice Presidential candidate (I almost forgot his name) Paul Ryan is a huge groupie of the writer. To hear him launch into an analysis of America's economic woes according to Rand is one of the great popcorn moments. Catch the 1947 version of Atlas Shrugged on YouTube. It is without doubt the most terrible movie the great icon Gary Cooper ever made. But as loony as it is, even Atlas Shrugged The Movie doesn't begin to capture the epic insanity of the actual pages themselves.

And since we need even more people watching out for the coming Jihad, keeping "Jihad Watch"'s Robert Spencer out doesn't make sense. Since being a rightwinger makes him a "good Yank" he undoubtedly deserves the kind of welcome denied to him by his compatriots.

My one caution: I hope that Mr Robinson is having a care for Ms Geller's sensibilities. I'm pretty sure that she's never seen designer balaclavas before.

The Huffington Post UK are proud media partners of Wilderness Festival. Check back here for more exclusive blogs, competitions and stories soon. For tickets to the event click here: www.wildernessfestival.com]]>Tommy Robinson and Fox News - What's Not to Like?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.34304222013-06-12T19:00:00-04:002013-08-12T05:12:01-04:00Bonnie Greerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/bonnie-greer/Fox and Friends host Brian Kilmeade has saluted the EDL's Tommy Robinson with that ultimate New York assurance: "We've got your back".

This is obviously the latest in Fox News' attempt to bring the hottest international newsmakers to its 3million or so American viewers. Fox News, now that one of its own journalists has been the subject of scrutiny by various government agencies and whose cause has even been taken up by the esteemed New York Times, is on a kind of roll. So why not show its bona fides by spreading its tentacles to embrace those folks "overseas" who can provide a "fair and balanced" assessment of foreign goings on. And what better person to do that than the leader of the English Defence League? Being the head of something with the name "English" in it means that he can speak... well, English... a prime requisite for Fox News viewers who insist on Americans speaking nothing else. And with the word "defence" included in the title too, hey, what's not to like?

I first literally stumbled on Fox News in about 2007, when after frantically attempting to see if my Sky Box functioned after I'd dropped it, the first thing that worked on it was what I thought was a comedy show.

The Stars and Stripes waved gently in an imaginary breeze on the lower right hand corner of the screen, as a very funny woman ranted on about "Lefties". I thought that Ann Coulter - for it was she - was a comedian. Being a native of Chicago and used to 'Second City' routines, I sat amazed: How did she manage to combine this incredible comedy act with what looked like news comment. Fox News - what brilliance was this?

My American news memories are largely those of my long ago childhood and adolescence. Then very straight-laced men, in stentorian tones, told you the events of the day. And what they said was authoritative. There was no levity. No one shouted. No one HAD A POINT OF VIEW. Not on the news. The news was neutral. Or so I thought. Fox taught me that there is no neutral news. To Fox News and its viewers, all the news is slanted, all the news is Left-leaning.

As I realised later on the day that I discovered Fox News, I was not looking at a parody. This was real. I became fascinated by this entity, this anomaly, this concoction of comment, rant, bits and pieces of news, and something utterly toxic that was all its very own.

From that day until very recently, I was a Fox devotee. My devotion went through several stages. Because I'm a playwright, I was first thoroughly intrigued by the theatre of it. The women newsreaders all dressed like cool PR ladies for the Grand Ole Opre: full-glam makeup, lots of hair, shortish dresses, and - as they took pains to point out them - they all, to a woman, had law degrees.

The guys looked like every other news guy on the American TV that I remember except that they, talked in high, excitable tones. Every word seemed to have an exclamation point at the end.

Fox's breakfast programme, the one on which the EDL leader was assured that his back would be watched, is a kind of "wake-up-to-how-horrible-it-all-is" fiesta. To get Fox viewers ready for the day ahead. But it is the evening East Coast time, (1am and beyond here) slots where Fox News comes into its own, makes its money, creates its headlines. When I started watching the evening lineup there was Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes, the resident liberal, with their battle every night over the news of the day. Then came Bill O'Reilly, resident Big Thinker and creator of loads and loads of books, an Independent who tolerated "no spin". One black man, Juan Williams, completed the mix. And so that first phase of Fox watching for me was one of wonder and astonishment.

The next phase was the Age of Glenn Beck. How can I explain the rightwing awesomeness of him to anyone not American? Because every American knows him: Beck is the guy next door in the baseball cap who constantly stocks up on guns, canned goods, water, and binges on cookies while waiting for the Feds to come. And here he was: exhibiting this mentality live five days a week on TV. In time, his show became more and more whacked, the highlight being his interpretation of what he implied were the Illuminati-like origins of the Art Deco adornments on Rockefeller Centre. That was truly a performance I will never, ever forget. It was Glenn Beck who brought Tom Paine's monumental tome on liberty Common Sense to Fox viewers and with it yet another notion of an embattled America. This Beck-encouraged phenomenon came to be known under the generic term: the Tea Party.

Before I go any further, let me remind you that this blog is about a cable NEWS station, not a televisual right-wing talk radio. Which by the way, is what Fox News is. This is why it is the revolution. And why it has scattered everything else to the four winds. In asserting that news has a bias, a point of view, it simply dragged these assertions out into the light and clothed itself in them. Fox News recreated MSNBC, changed CNN, and scared the hell out of ABC, NBC, CBS - the warhorses I grew up with. Fox is conservative to right-wing, and slants the news that way. In doing so, Fox has played a huge part in creating the toxic political atmosphere that exists in America right now. It unabashedly aims to unseat the President of the United States; give unborn human beings citizenship; and wrap a big fat fence around the whole of the United States. That's just for starters.

Maybe Fox and Friends will give Tommy Robinson a slot as their UK correspondent, turn him into a benign guy, a kind of male Katie Couric. He can report, clad in a cutting-edge Savile Row suit, Handel soundtrack in the background, (no balaclavas allowed, even if they are branded), on the happenings in what most Americans think of as safe, funny, and kinda weird "Merrie Olde England."

With luck, and vigilance, neither Fox News nor its ilk will find its way over here.]]>Why All the Anti-Ed Miliband Polls in the World Don't Mattertag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.33603902013-05-30T19:00:00-04:002013-07-30T05:12:01-04:00Bonnie Greerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/bonnie-greer/
The right of centre press are having their usual field day, beating the drums about how truly awful and hopeless he is.

Recently, a poll was conducted that even said that Gordon Brown, the wrecker, many believe, of the entire economy of the western world, was better than Miliband the Lesser.

The man's a living Wallace and Gromit cartoon, many people chant, much too weird to be PM. The media dig up all of the bad pics they can find, give him no air time, rustle out every Blairite they can to take him down, but - looky there - Miliband is still standing.

And if Osborne doesn't get the economy right, Miliband will be PM, too. The smart Tories and pollsters know this. You won't hear them laughing.

The late William Rees-Mogg, in one of his last columns, wrote about a meeting he had had with Miliband. His pronouncement: Ed could be the next PM. Rees-Mogg, as much of a Labourite as I am a Tory, at that stage of his life, had no skin in the game. He was simply telling it like he saw it. And what he saw was Edward Samuel Miliband at the door of Number 10.

I was invited to the 2010 Labour Conference, the one in which Ed beat his brother David.

It is said that if you want to hear real anti-Americanism, listen to an American. If you want to hear the Labour Party done down, go to a Blairite. And that day in the hall, waiting for Ed to speak, all of the Blairites around me emitted the sound of wailing and the gnashing of teeth. The end had come.

Ed's acceptance speech was ok. Nothing special. Afterwards at the supper, he moved amongst the tables, shaking hands, thanking everyone. Just as the woman who he saved from a bike accident said recently, the camera doesn't capture who the guy is. As he shook my hand, it was clear to me that, no matter what, here was a focused and confident person. He didn't seem to me like a person who pays a whole lot of attention to polls or the press.

The real question is this: is what he wants any good for the nation?

We've yet to know much, yet to test this out. Any party in Opposition has to be careful. Standpoints can be appropriated, policies nicked.

In the UK's increasingly Presidential style of politics (Cameron even has a portable podium that screams "President") we're asked constantly who we want as PM. Problem is that this is a parliamentary democracy. The people don't directly elect the PM. The question is moot.

Sothe fact that Cameron consistently polls ahead of his party, in the end, doesn't really count. Our local MP does. And nobody - neither left nor right or nowhere - like the Tories right now.

Cameron, smart PR guy that he is, is trying to build a new constituency, a new base. He knows that the party is at a demographic and electoral disadvantage. It needs new blood, a fresh start.

But as the Tories engage in intra-Party bloodletting, Labour remains quiet and at least outwardly behind Miliband. All politicians know that electorates do not reward split Parties. The Tories are scared.

Nigel Farage himself may enter the House of Commons, but the fact is Ukip's likelihood of holding the whiphand in 2015 as far as No. 10 are concerned is zip. They can't win enough MPs to count. The system ensures this. What they can do and are doing is destroy the Conservatives' right flank. Ukip are inflicting damage on everyone, but it's the Tories who are getting the kicking.

Nevertheless, when the General Election comes around, it'll be, once again, all about the big dogs - Labour and the Conservatives. Just like it always was.

Meanwhile there's Ed Miliband, Labour leader now and into the 2015 General election. I'd advise those laughing at him to wise up.]]>